Zimbabwe’s Mnangagwa says new mining royalty rule starts this month

Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa said a new policy which compels miners to pay half of their royalties in commodities and in cash will start from this month as the country attempts to build mineral reserves for the first time.

The Southern African nation will hold reserves of gold, diamonds, platinum and lithium, Mnangagwa said in his weekly column published in the Sunday Mail newspaper. 

“Starting this October, government now requires that part of these royalties come as actual refined mining product in respect of each of the four minerals,” he wrote in the state-owned paper.

Mining companies that operate in Zimbabwe include subsidiaries of Impala Platinum, Anglo American Platinum and Sibanye Gold. Zimbabwe has the world’s third-largest reserves of platinum, and also mines nickel, chrome, lithium and coal.

The decision to ask miners to pay in commodities and cash will assist the government to build physical reserves of precious and strategic minerals and also enable the collection of cash revenue for day-to-day running of state affairs, Mnangagwa said. The reserves may also be used to securitise borrowings by government.

The central bank will be the custodian of the mineral reserves, which Mnangagwa said will receive only processed final products instead of stockpiling ore.

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